Faith and Unfaith: A Novel

Her voice is peculiar, – half childish, half petulant, and wholly sweet. She is not crying, but great tears are standing in her eyes as though eager to fall, and her lips are trembling.

"I didn't like to come earlier," says Clarissa, kissing her again. "It is only twelve now, you know; but I was longing every bit as much to see you as you could be to see me. Oh, Georgie, how glad I am to have you near me! and – you have not changed a little scrap."

She says this in a relieved tone.

"Neither have you," says Georgie: "you are just the same. There is a great comfort in that thought. If I had found you changed, – different in any way, – what should I have done? I felt, when I saw you standing tall and slight in the doorway, as if time had rolled back, and we were together again at Madame Brochet's. Oh, how happy I was then! And now – now – "

The big tears in her pathetic eyes tremble to their fall, she covers her face with her hands.

"Tell me everything," says Clarissa, tenderly.

"What is there to tell? – except that I am alone in the world, and very desolate. It is more than a year ago now since – since – papa left me. It seems like a long century. At first I was apathetic; it was despair I felt, I suppose; indeed, I was hardly conscious of the life I was leading when with my aunt. Afterwards the reaction set in; then came the sudden desire for change, the intense longing for work of any kind; and then – "

"Then you thought of me!" says Clarissa, pressing her hand.

"That is true. Then I thought of you, and how ready your sympathy had ever been. When – when he died, he left me a hundred pounds. It was all he had to leave." She says this hastily, passionately, as though it must be gone through, no matter how severe the pain that accompanies the telling of it. Clarissa, understanding, draws even closer to her. This gentle movement is enough. A heart, too full, breaks beneath affection's touch. Georgie bursts into tears.

"It was all on earth he had to give," she sobs, bitterly, "and I think he must have starved himself to leave me even that! Oh, shall I ever forget?"

"In time," whispers Clarissa, gently. "Be patient: wait." Then, with a sigh, "How sad for some this sweet world can be!"

"I gave my aunt forty pounds," goes on the fair-haired beauty, glad to find somebody in whom she can safely confide and to whom her troubles may be made known. "I gave it to her because I had lived with her some time, and she was not kind to me, and so I felt I should pay her something. And then I put a little white cross on his grave before I left him, lest he should think himself quite forgotten. It was all I could do for him," concludes she, with another heavy sob that shakes her slight frame.

Her heart seems broken! Clarissa, who by this time is dissolved in tears, places her arms round her, and presses her lips to her cheek.

"Try, try to be comforted," entreats she. "The world, they tell me, is full of sorrow. Others have suffered, too. And nurse used to tell me, long ago, that those who are unhappy in the beginning of their lives are lucky ever after. Georgie, it may be so with you."

"It may," says Georgie, with a very faint smile; yet, somehow, she feels comforted.

"Do you think you will be content here?" asks Clarissa, presently, when some minutes have passed.

"I think so. I am sure of it. It is such a pretty place, and so unlike the horrid little smoky town from which I have come, and to which" (with a heavy sigh), "let us hope, I shall never return."

"Never do," says Clarissa giving her rich encouragement. "It is ever so much nicer here." As she has never seen the smoky town in question, this is a somewhat gratuitous remark. "And the children are quite sweet, and very pretty; and the work won't be very much; and – and I am only just, an easy walking-distance from you."

At this termination they both laugh.

Georgie seems to have forgotten her tears of a moment since, and her passionate burst of grief. Her lovely face is smiling, radiant; her lips are parted; her great blue eyes are shining. She is a warm impulsive little creature, as prone to tears as to laughter, and with a heart capable of knowing a love almost too deep for happiness, and as surely capable of feeling a hatred strong and lasting.

The traces of her late emotion are still wet upon her cheeks. Perhaps she knows it not, but, "like some dew-spangled flower, she shows more lovely in her tears." She and Clarissa are a wonderful contrast. Clarissa is slight and tall and calm; she, all life and brightness, eager, excited, and unmindful of the end.

Cissy Redmond, at this juncture, summons up sufficient courage to open the door and come in again. She ignores the fact of Georgie's red eyes, and turns to Clarissa. She has Miss Peyton's small dog in her arms, – the terrier, with the long and melancholy face, that goes by the name of Bill.

"Your dog," she says to Clarissa, "and such a pet. He has eaten several legs off the tables, and all my fingers. His appetite is a credit to him. How do you provide for him at Gowran? Do you have an ox roasted whole occasionally, for his special benefit?"

"Oh, he is a worry," says Clarissa, penitently. "Billy, come here, you little reprobate, and don't try to look as if you never did anything bad in your life. Cissy, I wish you and Georgie and the children would all come up to Gowran to-morrow."

"We begin lessons to-morrow," says the new governess, gravely, who looks always so utterly and absurdly unlike a governess, or anything but a baby or a water-pixie, with her yellow hair and her gentian eyes. "It will be impossible for me to go."

"But lessons will be over at two o'clock," says Cissy, who likes going to Gowran, and regards Clarissa as "a thing of beauty." "Why not walk up afterwards?"

"I shall expect you," says Clarissa, with decision; and then the two girls tell her they will go with her as far as the vicarage gate, as she must now go home.

There she bids them good-by, and, passing through the gate, goes up the road. Compelled to look back once again, by some power we all know at times, she sees Georgie's small pale face pressed against the iron bars, gazing after her, with eyes full of lonely longing.

"Good-by, Clarissa," she says, a little sad imploring cadence desolating her voice.

"Until to-morrow" replies Clarissa, with an attempt at gayety, though in reality the child's mournful face is oppressing her. Then she touches the ponies lightly, and disappears up the road and round the corner, with Bill, as preternaturally grave as usual, sitting bolt upright beside her.

The next morning is soft and warm, and, indeed, almost sultry for the time of year. Thin misty clouds, white and shadowy, enwrap the fields and barren ghost-like trees and sweep across the distant hills. There is a sound as of coming rain, – a rushing and a rustling in the naked woods. "A still wild music is abroad," as though a storm is impending, that shall rise at night and shake the land the more fiercely because of its enforced silence all this day.

"But now, at noon,Upon the southern side of the slant hill,And where the woods fence off the northern blastThe season smiles, resigning all its rage,And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue,Without a cloud: and white without a speck,The dazzling splendor of the scene below."

The frost has gone, for the time being; no snow fell last night; scarcely does the wind blow. If, indeed, "there is in souls a sympathy with sounds," I fear Georgie and Cissy and the children must be counted utterly soulless, as they fail to hear the sobbing of the coming storm, but with gay voices and gayer laughter come merrily over the road to Gowran. Upon the warm sullen air the children's tones ring like sweet silver bells.

As they enter the gates of Gowran, the youngest child, Amy, runs to the side of the new governess, and slips her hand through her arm.

"I am going to tell you about all the pretty things as we go along," she says, patronizingly yet half shyly, rubbing her cheek against Miss Broughton's shoulder. She is a tall, slender child, and to do this has to stoop a little. "You fairy," she goes on, admiringly, encouraged perhaps by the fact that she is nearly as tall as her instructress, "you are just like Hans Andersen's tales. I don't know why."

"Amy! Miss Broughton won't like you to speak to her like that," says Cissy, coloring.

But Georgie laughs.

"I don't mind a bit," she says, giving the child's hand a reassuring pressure. "I am accustomed to being called that, and, indeed, I rather like it now. I suppose I am very small. But" (turning anxiously to Cissy, and speaking quite as shyly as the child Amy had spoken a moment since) "there is a name to which I am not accustomed, and I hate it. It is 'Miss Broughton.' Won't you call me 'Georgie?'"

"Oh, are you sure you won't mind?" says the lively Cissy, with a deep and undisguised sigh of relief. "Well, that is a comfort! it is all I can do to manage your name. You don't look a bit like a 'Miss Anything,' you know, and 'Georgie' suits you down to the ground."

"Look, look! There is the tree where the fairies dance at night," cries Amy, eagerly, her little, thin, spiritual face lighting with earnestness, pointing to a magnificent old oak-tree that stands apart from all the others, and looks as though it has for centuries defied time and storm and proved itself indeed "sole king of forests all."

"Every night the fairies have a ball there," says Amy, in perfect good faith. "In spring there is a regular wreath of blue-bells all round it, and they show where the 'good folks' tread."

"How I should like to see them!" says Georgie, gravely. I think, in her secret soul, she is impressed by the child's solemnity, and would prefer to believe in the fairies rather than otherwise.

"Well, you ought to know all about them," says Amy, with a transient but meaning smile: "you belong to them, don't you? Well" (dreamily), "perhaps some night we shall go out hand in hand and meet them here, and dance with them all the way to fairy-land."

"Miss Broughton, – there – through the trees! Do you see something gleaming white?" asks Ethel, the eldest pupil. "Yes? Well, there, in that spot, is a marble statue of a woman, and underneath her is a spring. It went dry ever so many years ago, but when Clarissa's great grandfather died the waters burst out again, and every one said the statue was crying for him, he was so good and noble and so well beloved."

"I think you might have let me tell that story," says Amy, indignantly. "You knew I wanted to tell her that story."

"I didn't," with equal indignation; "and, besides, you told her about the fairies' ball-room. I said nothing about that."

"Well, at all events," says Georgie, "they were two of the prettiest stories I ever heard in my life. I don't know which was the prettier."

"Now, look at that tree," breaks in Amy, hurriedly, feeling it is honestly her turn now, and fearing lest Ethel shall cut in before her. "King Charles the Second spent the whole of one night in that identical tree."

"Not the whole of it," puts in Ethel, unwisely.

"Now, I suppose this is my story, at all events," declares Amy, angrily, "and I shall just tell it as I like."

"Poor King Charles!" says Georgie, with a laugh, "If we are to believe all the stories we hear, half his lifetime must have been spent 'up a tree.'"

A stone balcony runs before the front of the house. On it stands Clarissa, as they approach, but, seeing them, she runs down the steps and advances eagerly to meet them.

"Come in," she says. "How late you are! I thought you had proved faithless and were not coming at all."

"Ah! what a lovely hall!" says Georgie, as they enter, stopping in a childishly delighted fashion to gaze round her.

"It's nothing to the drawing-room: that is the most beautiful room in the world," says the irrepressible Amy, who is in her glory, and who, having secured the unwilling but thoroughly polite Bill, is holding him in her arms and devouring him with unwelcome kisses.

"You shall see the whole house, presently," says Clarissa to Georgie, "including the room I hold in reserve for you when these children have driven you to desperation."

"That will be never," declares Amy, giving a final kiss to the exhausted Billy. "We like her far too much, and always will, I know, because nothing on earth could make me afraid of her!"

At this they all laugh. Georgie, I think, blushes a little; but even the thought that she is not exactly all she ought to be as an orthodox governess cannot control her sense of the ludicrous.

"Cissy, when is your father's concert to come off?" asks Clarissa, presently.

"At once, I think. The old organ is unendurable. I do hope it will be a success, as he has set his heart on getting a new one. But it is so hard to make people attend. They will pay for their tickets, but they won't come. And, after all, what the – the others like, is to see the county."

"Get Dorian Branscombe to help you. Nobody ever refuses him anything."

"Who is Dorian Branscombe?" asks Georgie, indifferently, more from want of something to say than an actual desire to know.

"Dorian?" repeats Clarissa, as though surprised; and then, correcting herself with a start, "I thought every one knew Dorian. But I forgot, you are a stranger. He is a great friend of mine; he lives near this, and you must like him."

"Every one likes him," says Cissy, cordially.

"Lucky he," says Georgie. "Is he your lover, Clarissa?"

"Oh, no," – with a soft blush, born of the thought that if he is not the rose he is very near to it. "He is only my friend, and a nephew of Lord Sartoris."

"So great as that?" – with a faint grimace. "You crush me. I suppose he will hardly deign to look at me?"

As she speaks see looks at herself in an opposite mirror, and smiles a small coquettish smile that is full of innocent childish satisfaction, as she marks the fair vision that is given back to her by the friendly glass.

"I hope he won't look at you too much, for his own peace of mind," says Cissy, at which Clarissa laughs again; and then, the children getting impatient, they all go out to see the pigeons and the gardens, and stay lingering in the open air until afternoon tea is announced.

CHAPTER XIV

"Where music dwellsLingering, and wandering on, as loath to die,Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proofThat they were born for immortality." – Wordsworth.

The parish church of Pullingham is as naught in the eyes of the parishioners, in that it is devoid of an organ. No sweet sounds can be produced from the awful and terrifying instrument that for years has served to electrify the ears of those unfortunate enough to possess sittings in the church. It has at last failed!

One memorable Sunday it groaned aloud, – then squeaked mildly; cr – r – r – k went something in its inside; there was a final shriek, more weird than the former, and then all was still! How thankful should they have been for that! I believe they were truly and devoutly so, but love for the "heavenly maid" still reigned in all their hearts, and with joy they hearkened to their vicar when he suggested the idea of a concert to be given for the purpose of raising funds wherewith to purchase a new organ, or, at least, to help to purchase it. The very thought was enough to raise high Jubilee within their musical hearts.

Now, the one good thing still belonging to Mrs. Redmond is the remains of what must once have been a very beautiful voice. With this she possesses the power of imparting to others her own knowledge of music, – a rather rare gift. With her own children, of course, she can do nothing; they are veritable dead-letters in her hands, – she being one of those women who spend their lives admonishing and thrusting advice upon the world, yet find themselves unequal to the government of their own household. But with the village choir all is different; here she reigns supreme, and is made much of, for Pullingham is decidedly musical, and all its young men and all its young women either sing, or think they sing, or long after singing.

Tenors, sopranos, and basses are to be met with round every corner; the very air is thick with them. The Pullinghamites will sing, whether they can or not, with a go and a gusto that speaks well for their lungs, if a trifle trying to the listeners.

Vocal music being the thing held highest in favor in the Methodist chapel, where Mr. Leatham, the "Methody" parson, holds unorthodox services, many were the seceders from the parish church to join the choir in the whitewashed chapel and shout the hymns of Moody and Sankey, just at the commencement of this story.

Such secessions went nigh to breaking Mr. Redmond's heart. The organ had failed him; it had wheezed, indeed, valiantly to the last, as though determined to die game; but a day had come, as I said, when it breathed its last sigh and the ancient bellows refused to produce another note.

What was to be done? The villagers should and would have music at any cost, and they never could be brought to see the enormity of worshipping in the whitewashed edifice that was, and is, as the temple of Belial in the eyes of their vicar.

It would take some time to procure funds for another and more satisfactory organ. In the mean time, the whilom choir was falling to pieces. The late organist had accepted a fresh and more lucrative post: there was literally no head to keep the members together. What was to be done?

In desperation, the vicar asked himself this, whilst looking vainly round for some one to help him drag back his flock from the vicious influence of the "American songsters," as he most irreverently termed Messrs. M. and S. And it was then, when he was at his wits' end, that Mrs. Redmond most unexpectedly came to the rescue. It was the first and the last time in her life she ever rose to the occasion: but this one solitary time she did it perfectly, and coming boldly to the front, carried all before her.

She would undertake a singing-class; she would arrange, and teach, and keep together a choir that should reduce to insignificance the poor pretensions of a man like Leatham! The vicar, dazzled by all this unlooked-for energy, gave his consent to her scheme, and never afterwards repented it; for in three short months she had regulated and coached a singing-class that unmistakably outshone its Methodistical rivals.

And then came the question of the new organ.

"We have some money, but not enough money," said the vicar, one evening, to the partner of his joys; "and something should be done to bring the want of an organ before the public."

"I should think it must be sufficiently brought before them every Sunday," said Mrs. Redmond, triumphantly laying her tenth mended sock in the basket near her.

"The parish is all very well, my dear, but the county ought to hear of it, and ought to help. I insist upon the county putting its hands in its pockets."

"I think you are quite right to insist," said Mrs. Redmond, placidly; "but how are you going to do it?"

"Let us give a concert," said the vicar, at last bringing to the light of day his great project, that fairly took his wife's breath away. "Yes, a concert, to which the whole county shall come and hear my – nay, your – choir surpass itself."

Mrs. Redmond was struck dumb by this bold proposition, but, finally giving in, she consented to teach the choir, assiduously twice a week, all the quartettes and trios and solos she knew; while still declaring, in a dismal fashion, that she knew the whole thing would be a dismal failure, and that the great cause would lose by it more than it would gain.

Many days, many hours, has Mr. Redmond spent arranging and disarranging all the details of the proposed concert.

The idea is in itself a "happy thought," – far happier than any of Burnand's (so he tells himself); but a concert, however unpretentious, is a prodigious affair, and not to be conducted by half a dozen raw recruits.

Besides, the county admires the county, and would prefer seeing itself represented on the boards to listening to the warblings, be they never so sweet, of an outsider. It is so far more delicious to laugh behind one's fan at the people in one's own set than at those outside the pale of recognition. And, of course, the county must be humored.

The vicar grows nervous as he masters this fact, and strives diligently to discover some among the upper ten who will come forward and help to sweeten and gild the "great unwashed."

The duchess, unfortunately, is from home; but Lady Mary and Lady Patricia are at the Castle, and Lady Mary – when she can be heard, which, to do her justice, is very seldom, even in a very small room – can sing nice little songs very nicely. Indeed, she is fond of describing her own voice as "a sweet little voice," and certainly all truth is embodied in the word "little."

Then there is young Hicks, the surgeon's son, who boasts a good baritone, and is addicted to Molloy and Adams and all of their class, and who positively revels in Nancy Lees, and such gentle beings as those to whom the "Tar's Farewell" may be gently breathed.

Then there is the long gawky man staying with the Bellews, who can shout from afar, and make music of his own that will probably, nay, surely, go a long way towards bringing down the house, as far as the farmer class is concerned; and with him will come Miss Bellew, who can produce a very respectable second in any duet, and who is safe to go anywhere with the long gawky young man, if report speaks truly.

Mrs. McConkie, from the neighboring parish, will lend a helping hand, her husband being a brother clergyman; and there is, besides, Mr. Henly, who plays the violin, and Mr. Johnson, who can recite both comic and melancholy pieces with such success as to bring tears or laughter, as the case may be, into the eyes of any one with half a soul!

As nobody will confess to anything less than a whole soul, everybody in Pullingham laughs or cries immoderately whenever Mr. Johnson gives way to recitations.

And last, but not least, there is always Sarah Martin, the leader of the village choir, and the principal feature in it, whose strong if slightly ear-piercing soprano must prove her worthy of a new organ.

To the vicar's intense chagrin, Dorian Branscombe is absent, – has, indeed, been up in town since the day before Georgie Broughton's arrival, now a fortnight old.

Dorian would have been such a comfort! Not that he sings, or plays, or fiddles, or, indeed, does anything in particular, beyond cajoling the entire neighborhood; but that, as it happens, is, in this case, everything. To cajole, to entreat, to compel the people to come in and fill the empty benches, is all the vicar would require at his hands.

And Dorian could do all this. No one ever refuses him anything. Both old women and young women acknowledge his power, and give in to him, and make much of him, and hardly feel the worse because of their subservience, – he having a little way of his own that makes them believe, when they have been most ignominiously betrayed into saying "yes" to one of his wildest propositions, he has been conferring a favor upon them, more or less, for which he is just too generous to demand thanks.

But this invaluable ally is absent. The vicar, in the privacy of his own sanctum, – where no one can witness the ungodly deed, – stamps his feet with vexation as he thinks on this, and tells himself he is unlucky to the last degree, and acknowledges a worth in Dorian Branscombe never learned before!

Clarissa is perfectly delighted with the whole idea, and somewhat consoles him by her ready offers of assistance, and her determination to step into the absent Dorian's shoes and make love to the county in his stead.

She persists in calling it the "first concert of the season," which rather alarms the vicar, who is depressed by his wife's prognostications of failure, and sees nothing but ruin ahead. She declares her intention of publishing it in all the London papers, and offers the whole of the winter conservatories to decorate the school-house (where it is to be held), so that those accustomed to the sight of its white and somewhat barren walls will fail to recognize it in its new-born beauty.

"Then, shall we name the 4th as the day?" says the vicar, with some trepidation. It is now the end of January, and he is alluding to the first week in the ensuing month. "I wish you could sing, Clarissa! I dare say you would help me."